Oxford, October 30, 2013 - Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, congratulates the winners of the 2013 Semantic Web Challenge (SWC). Determined by a jury of leading experts in computer semantics from both academia and industry, the winners were announced at the 12th International Semantic Web Conference held in Sydney, Australia, October 21-25. The challenge and allocated prizes were sponsored by Elsevier.
The SWC was first organized in 2003 to showcase the very latest in semantic web technology, and is open to everyone from industry and academia. Participants can compete in one of two challenge categories: the Open Track and the Big Data Track. The key difference between the two tracks is that the Big Data Track requires the participants to make use of large-scale data sets.
This year the SWC received 17 proposals that made it into the challenge; of these, nine progressed to the final round of the competition. The panel of experts finally selected four Open Track Challenge winners and one Big Data Track winner.
Open Track challenge winners:
1st prize
"The BBC World Service Archive Prototype", by Yves Raimond and Tristan Herne; the winners showed a unique combination of audio processing, crowdsourcing, analytics and visualization pulled together semantically allowing the BBC to link and access archive materials within and during live broadcasts.
2nd prize
"Constitute: The World's Constitutions to Read, Search and Compare", by Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg, James Melton, Robert Shaffer, Juan F. Sequeda and Daniel Miranker; a curated semantic solution applicable to the legal domain, allowing researchers to explore and compare all of the world's constitutions in one easy interface. In this instance the relevance of how semantic web technology can support real world problems was further demonstrated by the fact that this tool has been selected to draft a new constitution for Tunisia.
3rd prize, jointly awarded
"B-hist: Entity-Centric Search over Personal Web Browsing History", by Michele Catasta, Alberto Tonon, Vincent Pasquier, Gianluca Demartini, Philippe Cudré-Mauroux and Karl Aberer; developed a new, visually appealing way for navigating through your personal browsing history.
"STAR-CITY: Semantic Traffic Analytics and Reasoning for CITY", by Freddy Lecue, Simone Tallevi-Diotallevi, Jer Hayes, Robert Tucker, Veli Bicer, Marco Luca Sbodio and Pierpaolo Tommasi; following the development of Smart Cities, this system showcases how traffic within a city can be better visualized, predicted and managed through semantic technology.
Big Data Track challenge winner:
"Fostering Serendipity through Big Linked Data" by Muhammad Saleem, Maulik R. Kamdar, Aftab Iqbal, Shanmukha Sampath, Helena F. Deus and Axel-Cyrille Ngonga Ngomo; this system shows how high volume and high velocity of latest published bio-medical research papers from PubMed can be intelligently and semantically integrated within the Linked Cancer Genome Atlas dataset (TCGA), thus supporting and facilitating cancer researchers in their important work.
"We were very impressed to see this year's challengers address real world problems and in some cases already see them having a societal impact. The winners of the 2013 SWC have successfully combined innovative semantic web technology with an end user practical focus and efficiency in use," explained SWC co-chairs Andreas Harth, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Sean Bechhofer, University of Manchester.
"The challenge has progressed over the years from an academic exercise to an event where top industry research and development labs compete with world-leading academic research groups to showcase state of the art in this field. Elsevier is proud to sponsor the Semantic Web Challenge annually as a forum for industry and academia to exchange and disseminate knowledge," said Sweitze Roffel, Senior Publisher in Computer Science at Elsevier.
About the Semantic Web Challenge
The Semantic Web Challenge has been organized in cooperation with the Semantic Web Science Association since 2003 with the aim to offer participants the chance to submit their best Semantic Web Applications. The overall objective of the challenge is to apply Semantic Web techniques in building online end-user applications that integrate, combine and deduce information needed to assist users in performing tasks. As the potential of the Semantic Web is very broad, the open challenge intentionally does not define any specific task, data set, or application domain. To allow a broad range of applications to compete with each other, all teams are judged using a number of minimal criteria, as well as additional desired criteria. Based on these predefined criteria the winners are selected by an expert jury.
Full details of the competition, judging, as well as all the competing teams, including their papers, demos and presentations can be found on http://challenge.semanticweb.org
About the Semantic Web
The central idea of the Semantic Web is to extend the current human-readable web by encoding some of the semantics of resources in a machine-processable form. Moving beyond syntax opens the door to more advanced applications and functionality on the Web. Computers will be better able to search, process, integrate and present the content of these resources in a meaningful, intelligent manner.
About the International Semantic Web Conference series
The International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) is the premier international forum for the Semantic Web and Linked Data Community. At the conference scientists, industry specialists, and practitioners meet to discuss the future of practical, scalable, user-friendly, and game changing solutions. ISWC is organized annually by the Semantic Web Science Association and typically rotates between America, Europe and Asia/Pacific.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, Reaxys, ClinicalKey and Mosby's Suite, which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, helping research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC, a world leading provider of professional information solutions. The group employs more than 30,000 people, including more than 15,000 in North America. Reed Elsevier Group PLC is owned equally by two parent companies, Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. Their shares are traded on the London, Amsterdam and New York Stock Exchanges using the following ticker symbols: London: REL; Amsterdam: REN; New York: RUK and ENL.
Media contact
James Palser
Elsevier
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J.Palser@elsevier.com